Increas­ing the use of elec­tron­ic pro­cure­ment (e-pro­cure­ment) in Europe can gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings for Euro­pe­an tax­pay­ers. Pub­lic enti­ties that have already imple­ment­ed e-pro­cure­ment report sav­ings of between 5% and 20% of their pro­cure­ment expend­i­ture, EC press office report­ed. The total size of the EU's pro­cure­ment mar­ket is esti­mat­ed to be more than 2 tril­lion euro, so each 5% saved could result in about 100 bil­lion euro of sav­ings per year - which is equiv­a­lent to build­ing more than 150 large size hos­pi­tals. These sav­ings would max­i­mise the effi­cien­cy of pub­lic spend­ing in the cur­rent con­text of fis­cal con­straints.

The Euro­pe­an Com­mis­sion released 20 April a Com­mu­ni­ca­tion that sets out a strat­e­gy to achieve this ambi­tious tran­si­tion. It pro­pos­es a series of flank­ing meas­ures meant to sup­port all stake­hold­ers, includ­ing SMEs, in com­plet­ing the tran­si­tion on time. Com­mis­sion­er for Inter­nal Mar­ket and Serv­i­ces Bar­ni­er said: "It's time to act. E-pro­cure­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant untapped poten­tial for the EU econ­o­my. It can sim­pli­fy the way pro­cure­ment is con­duct­ed, reduce bur­dens and costs, increase the par­tic­i­pa­tion of SMEs and deliv­er bet­ter qual­i­ty and low­er pri­ces. The soon­er the tran­si­tion is ini­ti­at­ed, the soon­er we will reap the ben­e­fits offered by e-pro­cure­ment."

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion also announ­ces that the Euro­pe­an Com­mis­sion itself will move towards full e-pro­cure­ment by mid-2015 - a full year ahead of the dead­line for Mem­ber States - and that the Com­mis­sion will make its e-pro­cure­ment solu­tions avail­a­ble to Mem­ber States. The meas­ures pro­posed by the EC include: sup­port­ing finan­cial­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly the devel­op­ment of e-pro­cure­ment infra­struc­ture via EU pro­grammes and fund­ing; iden­ti­fy­ing and shar­ing best prac­tice in the area of e-pro­cure­ment; mon­i­tor­ing the lev­el of take-up and the ben­e­fits of e-pro­cure­ment and imple­ment­ing a wide-ran­ging dis­sem­i­na­tion strat­e­gy to inform stake­hold­ers about the oppor­tu­ni­ties and ben­e­fits offered by e-pro­cure­ment.

E-pro­cure­ment can also par­tic­i­pate in pro­vid­ing new sour­ces of eco­nom­ic growth and jobs. E-pro­cure­ment can sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fy the life of com­pa­nies, espe­cial­ly SMEs, by increas­ing the trans­par­en­cy of and access to ten­der oppor­tu­ni­ties and by reduc­ing the costs of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a ten­der like reduced mail costs, less print­ing, etc. Expe­ri­ence in the EU and beyond shows that the use of e-pro­cure­ment has increased the par­tic­i­pa­tion of SMEs in pub­lic pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures.

Despite these undis­pu­ta­ble ben­e­fits, the EU is lag­ging behind both its own tar­gets and inter­na­tion­al­ly. E-pro­cure­ment is still used in only 5-10% of pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures car­ried out across the EU. The Dig­i­tal Agen­da for Europe and the eGov­ern­ment Action Plan 2011- 2015 high­light­ed the impor­tance of con­nect­ing e-pro­cure­ment capac­i­ties across the Sin­gle Mar­ket. In the con­text of the mod­ern­i­sa­tion of the Euro­pe­an Pub­lic pro­cure­ment Direct­ives, adopt­ed in Decem­ber 2011, EC pro­posed to make e-pro­cure­ment the rule rath­er than the excep­tion, by mak­ing it the stand­ard meth­od the EU by mid-2016.